322 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



In 1894 with the kindly assistance and advice of my teacher, Prof. 

 J. L. Budd, the writer visited the Imperial Agricultural College, at 

 Moscow, Russia, and in 1897 the visit was repeated while on a tour of 

 exploration for Hon. James Wilson to secure new seeds and plants 

 for the U. S. Department of Agriculture in the dry parts of eastern 

 Russia, central Asia, China and Siberia. Prof. R. Schroeder, the ven- 

 erable head of the horticultural department, has "been in the govern- 

 ment service over fifty years. He said that the Russian method of 

 preventing the root-killing of apple trees was to use the true Si- 

 berian crab, Pyrus baccata, as a stock. The seedlings are trans- 

 planted into nursery rows and budded at the usual time in August. 

 The trees make a good growth in the nursery, bear at least two 

 years earlier in orchard, and are dwarfed somewhat in size of tree. 

 In the southern parts of Russia, as at Kiev, where even French pears 

 are grown, I found the nursery stocks to be mostly ordinary apple 

 seedlings from Germany and France, as they were cheaper than 

 apple seedlings of Russian origin, which were difficult to obtain in 

 commercial quantities. (A similar state of affairs obtains in our 

 eastern states,where crab seedlings imported from France, or grown 

 from imported seed, are at times cheaper than seedlings from seed 

 saved at our cider mills.) 



Pyrus baccata is the hardiest known species of the apple and is 

 hardy even at the agricultural experiment station at Indian Head, 

 about 3f)0 miles west of Winnipeg, on the Canadian Pacific Railway, 

 where the thermometer goes down to 52 degrees or more below zero. 

 It is found especially in the Transbaikal section of Siberia, east of 

 Lake Baikal, where the climate is purely continental. The coldest 

 month has a temperature of 28° C. (or — 18.4° Fahrenheit,) the hottest 

 month, 19° C. (or 66.2° Fahrenheit); difference between winter and 

 summer temperature, 42° C. (or 75.6° Fahrenheit.) The mean annual 

 temperature is — 2%° C. (or 27.05° Fahrenheit.) A Russian government 

 report says: "As for the mean temperature of the vegetative period, 

 although it is one-half degree below that of the cultivated zone of 

 eastern Siberia, amounting to only 13.5°, yet the cereals, notwith- 

 standing the constantlj' frozen soil in some places in this country 

 at depth of lYo arshine (42 inches), ripen well, thanks to the more 

 powerful action of the sun's rays, depending not only on the south- 

 ernly situation of the Transbaikal but also on the cloudless and 

 transparent atmosphere, as compared with the cultivated regions of 

 Eastern and Western Siberia. 



"In reference to the amount of rainfall, the climate of Transbai- 

 kalia is also incomparably more continental than that of the agri- 

 cultural zone of Eastern and Western Siberia. The quantity of 

 moisture precipitated here in the course of the whole year does not 

 exceed 290 millimeters (11.42 inches), instead of the 360 and 380 of the 

 agricultural zones of Eastern and Western Siberia, while the winters 

 are almost entirely snowless, with 13 millimeters (51 inches) during 

 the whole season. Fortunately the summer rainfall, as much as 200 

 millimeters(7.87 inches), is considerably higher not only than that in 

 Eastern but than that in Western Siberia, and the conjunction of 

 these conditions explain the fact that the Transbaikal country may 



